Chasing Electric Butterflies
by LarielRomeniel
Summary: NineRose. An accident leads to an encounter with one of history's socalled mad scientists.


Written for the "Anywhere But Cardiff" ficathon on the LiveJournal community TimeandChips. Many thanks to Aibhinn for her help with many revisions; this is almost as much hers as mine. Of course, the BBC owns it all.

* * *

He should have known the electric butterflies were trouble.

Not that the butterflies were really electric. They were just charged with electrical energy, each one fluttering down the unpaved street in a blue corona.

And not that this electrical energy was dangerous in itself. At least, not in the sense that anyone would be hurt by it. Too low-level to be a problem.

No, the real trouble, the trouble he should have seen coming, was that these butterflies were attractive and mesmerizing. And so of course they caught Rose's attention, as bright and curious and jeopardy-friendly as she was.

Neither of them realized that there was any jeopardy in electric butterflies. Most of the people on the street were ignoring the insects, so the Doctor didn't give it another thought, chalking it up to the electromagnetic energy that permeated this area of the Rockies.

But Murphy's Law seemed to be more constant in his life than the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Whatever could go wrong, would go wrong.

He should have known trouble was barreling straight toward them.

She had chased after the butterflies, the heavy skirts of her dress swishing in the dust. She'd laughed at the way the butterflies looped through the air, trails of blue plasma arcing behind them. They swirled around her as if she was the flower for which she was named. She started to hold out a hand, and then looked at him. "Is it safe?"

He nodded. "Oh, yeah. Just St. Elmo's fire. Might tingle a bit, but it won't hurt you."

She put her hand up and smiled in delight as one of the butterflies hovered over it. Her happiness was infectious, and the Doctor found himself grinning as well. A moment of perfect beauty.

Of course it was too good to last. Now Rose was lying limply unconscious in his arms, her blood painted garishly red in her hair and over the side of her face. She hadn't been fast enough to evade the horse that had charged madly down the street, sparks flying from its hooves. He hadn't been fast enough to get to her before the horse reared in front of her, apparently terrified of the electric butterfly dancing over her hand. The horse towered over her, and then one hoof clipped her on the head. The animal's front legs went down, Rose went down and the butterfly went down into the dust. Then the Doctor was the one charging madly, and the horse shied away from him as he rushed desperately to Rose.

She was still breathing, pulse still beating, heart still pumping blood through her veins and out of the wound on her head. He dug in his jacket for something to stanch the flow, and his gaze landed on the butterfly lying crushed in the dirt.

"We need to get her out of the street."

The strange voice jerked the Doctor's attention away from the ruined butterfly. He looked up sharply into a pair of kindly blue eyes set in a lined face, framed by gray whiskers and topped off with a black hat. The stranger reached to help him lift Rose out of the dust. "I'm a doctor, sir," the man said. "I can help her. My office is right here." He nodded toward an open doorway across the street.

The Doctor followed the doctor through the door and laid Rose down on a sofa in the middle of the room. The stranger bent over her and pushed her hair aside so he could see the source of the bleeding.

"Scalp laceration," he said. "It looks worse than it really is." He opened his black bag and began to take out supplies as the Doctor examined the wound for himself.

Just a cut. Just a _big _cut. He'd forgotten how much humans could bleed from a scalp wound. But there was still the risk of concussion….He slipped the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and began to scan her head.

"Holy Hannah! What is that?" The other man was gaping at the screwdriver.

The Doctor quickly flicked it off, having determined that Rose wasn't concussed. "Oh, this is just an instrument to give me a better look, Doctor…ah…you didn't tell me your name?"

"I'm Doctor Lucas. I've never seen an instrument like that before," Lucas said, peering closely at it before starting to work on Rose's injury. "Did you get that from Niko? It looks like his work."

"Ah, no." The Doctor put the screwdriver away. "I'll let you do your work." He watched the other man, ready to jump in and take over. But there was no need. Lucas cleaned and stitched the wound neatly, gently and carefully. She began to stir.

"Doctor?" she mumbled. Lucas began to answer, but the Doctor cut him off.

"She's talking to me," he said, kneeling next to her. "Rose? I'm here. How are you feeling?"

She opened her eyes and groaned. "Like I was run over by a horse." She focused on him. "Are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost."

The Doctor grinned at her, not wanting her to know just how scared he'd been. "Just worried about your mother's reaction to all of this. Don't want to get slapped again."

"Shut up!" she chuckled, then groaned again, putting a hand up to her head. "On second thought, maybe you should worry about what Mum would say."

Doctor Lucas said, "I'm sorry about all this. Niko's experiments have been driving the town mad for weeks now. The horses seem to go crazy whenever he fires up his machine."

His worry for Rose now relieved, the Doctor's curiosity kicked in full force. He stood again and asked, "Experiments? What sort of experiments?"

Lucas shrugged. "I can't say I really understand all of it, although he keeps trying to explain it with small words. I'm really an old country doctor and I don't quite understand all this new science. But folks call him our resident mad scientist. He claims he's heard from other planets."

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "Really? I think I need to have a word with him about that and about spooking the horses. But…" He looked down at Rose.

"She's fine, but she needs to rest for a while," Lucas told him, then turned to address Rose. "Mrs….?" He paused inquiringly.

"Miss Tyler," the Doctor supplied.

Lucas' eyebrows lifted, but he went on, "Miss Tyler, you're welcome to stay here till your Doctor gets back."

"No way." Rose tried to stand. "Iknow what kind of trouble you can get into on your own. I really should…" As soon as she was on her feet, she swayed and put a hand to her head. The Doctor reached to grab her arm in support and opened his mouth to tell her she shouldn't be up, but she beat him to it. "I really should stay here, I suppose." She plopped back down. "Go ahead, Doctor. I know you want to see these experiments. You don't need to hover over me."

It was what he'd hoped she'd say, but all the same, he wasn't sure he wanted to leave her. "You'll be all right, then?"

"I'm sure Doctor Lucas will take care of me." She smiled, but he could see the remnants of disappointment in her eyes. She wanted to go with him, but knew she couldn't—and knew also that he had to find out what was going on, for the safety of the other people in town, if nothing else. That horse could have killed her, and might very well kill someone else if the thing that spooked it wasn't stopped.

He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded and turned to Lucas. "So where can I find this mad scientist?"

* * *

A few minutes later he was staring at an improbable structure. Most of it was a squat, wooden, box-like building, ordinary enough in itself, not unlike other buildings there in Colorado Springs. The improbable part was its single ornament: a metal tower that soared two hundred feet up, a copper sphere at its top. The building was surrounded by a fence covered with warning signs.

It was familiar, somehow, but the Doctor couldn't place it. He squared his shoulders and walked up to the doorway, ignoring the "KEEP OUT" signs plastered to the fence.

His knock was answered by a small, harried looking man with a shock of blond hair that stood on end. "This is _not_ the time!" the little man snapped irritably. "We are about to power up the big coil again!"

"Then this is the perfect time!" the Doctor said cheerily, pushing past the little man. "I've been hearing about your experiments. I want to see what you've been doing that electrifies butterflies and frightens horses and—oh!"

The Doctor stopped short, staring around the large room he'd entered. It was dominated by an enormous cylinder, surrounded by others mounted on wooden frame pedestals. A metal sphere was on another high stand. Electricity sparked between the sphere and one of the small cylinders.

_Folks call him our resident mad scientist._ Well, this 'Niko certainly had the perfect laboratory for it. It looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie.

Then a man who could only be the mad scientist himself stepped out from behind the largest cylinder. "Czito, I told you no press! We cannot have any distractions!"

Niko, if that was who he was, was tall, taller than the Doctor himself, with a black mustache and hair neatly slicked down. But what really caught the Doctor's attention were his eyes: dark, penetrating and very intelligent.

The little man was apologetic. "I'm sorry, sir, I couldn't stop him."

"Then make yourself useful. Shut down that coil and go check the tower." The little man nodded and complied, flipping a switch on one of the pedestals. The arcing electricity stopped, and Czito quickly left the room.

"I'm not from the press," the Doctor said. "I'm the Doctor— "

The mad scientist cut him off. "Did Edison send you?" he demanded angrily in a thick, eastern-European accent. "Is he looking for more stories he can use to ruin my reputation? No! You go back and tell him this: Nikola Tesla won the war of the currents, and nothing Edison says will stop my work now!"

The Doctor gaped for just a moment, realizing why everything looked familiar. _Niko… Nicola Tesla… of course!_ "Edison? That bloody wanker?" he asked aloud, derisively. He remembered that Tesla and Edison had been arch-rivals throughout much of the nineteenth century. "Got nothing to do with him. Came on my own to see your work. I read that you're gonna send a message from here to Paris."

Tesla stared him down for a moment, then strode over to kneel at the controls of the largest of what the Doctor now recognized as Tesla coils. "Paris? Why should I settle for Paris when we can send messages to other worlds?"

The Doctor moved to look over Tesla's shoulder curiously. When the inventor glared back at him, he put his hands up and backed off. "What other worlds?"

Tesla stood again and walked to one of the smaller coils to fiddle with those controls. "Venus. Mars. Maybe farther. I have already detected messages from them to us."

The Doctor followed him. "Really? What did they say?"

Tesla turned back to him. "I could not understand them, but that is not surprising. Do you expect alien beings to speak Earth languages? That would be rather arrogant of us."

The Doctor schooled his expression to avoid smirking. "If they don't understand our languages, how do you expect to send them any messages?"

"Mathematics! It is the universal language. One plus one always equals two, whether on Earth, Venus or Mars. But first we need to learn to control our wireless electrical transmissions."

"Control would be good," the Doctor agreed. His expression hardened. "My friend got hurt because of your uncontrolled experiments. You're sending the horses mad in the streets. One of them ran her down."

Tesla stopped his work and looked at the Doctor. "Is she all right?"

"If she wasn't, I'd have torn this place apart already," the Doctor answered darkly. "As it is, she has a minor head wound. I left her at Doctor Lucas' office to recuperate."

"I am sorry," Tesla said as he turned back to the control panel. "Lucas is a good doctor, even if he does not understand scientific processes or progress. He will take good care of her." He flicked a switch, and cursed in Serbian when the panel sparked.

"Here!" The Doctor pulled Tesla back and flicked the switch off. "You're going to need Doctor Lucas' services yourself if you keep this up. What are you trying to do here? I can help."

"It is very advanced," Tesla said. "You would not understand."

The Doctor grinned. "Try me."

Tesla raised an eyebrow. "Tell me what you know about electricity, then."

"Electricity. From the neo-Latin _electricus_. Move a magnet along a wire and you've got it. Conversely, run a current through a piece of metal and it becomes magnetized. That enough to start with?" the Doctor asked, not bothering to hide a slight smirk now.

"You understand the science," Tesla said. "But how can I be sure Edison did not send you?"

"Told you he's a wanker. Took all the credit for the Kinetoscope instead of sharing it properly with the team."

Tesla smiled grimly. "Did he tell you that you did not understand the American sense of humor? What he does not understand is that money is no laughing matter to a poor immigrant." He shook his head. "So, then! I have been observing the fantastic electrical displays by nature here in these mountains and have determined that the Earth itself is electrified. Not just that, it is charged to an extreme potential!" Tesla threw his arms out dramatically, warming to his subject. "Imagine this, Doctor. If we can artificially increase the magnitude of the Earth's electric charge, then we could also send that energy anywhere on the Earth!"

"And that's what you're trying to do here?" the Doctor asked. "But you won't get too far if you can't even turn on the big coil without nearly frying yourself." Tesla's big coil should be ready for use by this point. History said so.

Well, he thought, looking at the patently unready-for-use coils, time to help history along.

* * *

The Doctor tightened the last connection, then put his wrench down and flexed his hand. He wasn't accustomed to using conventional tools. The sonic screwdriver would have been more efficient, but would have raised questions he didn't want to answer. As it was, he was cutting it very fine with history, but now Tesla's experiments were back where the books said they should be.

"Excuse me, Doctor?" Czito had come back into the room and was looking at him curiously. "There is a telephone call for you. This way." Czito led him out of the lab to a small office. On a desk cluttered with paperwork stood a candlestick phone, its earpiece laying on a drawing of one of the big coils in the lab.

Rose was on the other end of the line. "Are you all right there, Doctor?"

"Oh, yeah. Just finishing up," the Doctor said, picking up one of the drawings to examine it. "What about you?"

"Much better, but I think Doctor Lucas would like to go home. It's getting late. I was going to come looking for you but he suggested I ring you instead. I think he's scandalised by the idea of a lady walking alone on the streets."

He glanced out the window. The sun was starting to set. "Sorry, Rose. I got wrapped up in things."

He could hear the smile in her voice. "I expected that as soon as Doctor Lucas explained who 'Niko' was. You're such a nerd!"

"I'll have you know that the nerds will inherit the Earth. Along with the rest of the known universe." He paused as she giggled. "I'm done here, so I'll be back in just a minute."

"All right. Just don't go chasing any electric butterflies. They're trouble!"

The Doctor smiled. "I'll be right there." He hung up the phone and took one last look at the drawing. Frowning, he picked up a pencil laying in the clutter and added a few more lines to the sketch. Just one more thing to get Tesla back on track. He put the sketch down and returned to the lab. "Time for me to go," he announced. "Got places to go and people to see."

"But we're about to start the coil!" Tesla protested. "Won't you stay for that?"

"Sorry, behind schedule a bit. I'll read all about it in the papers, I'm sure." He reached out to shake Tesla's hand. "Best of luck to you, Mr. Tesla. It was a real pleasure. Mr. Czito, you too. Good evening."

He pushed his way out as quickly as he'd pushed his way in, confident that history was on course once again.

* * *

His patient now gone, Doctor Lucas turned out the light and stepped out into the cool evening air. The sun had gone down, and the glow of electric lamps shone from many windows.

A strange pair, the Doctor and Miss Tyler, saying they had to catch their ride. There were no trains or stages due until tomorrow, so Lucas suspected they were in a hurry for another reason. Especially when he saw the intensely devoted way they looked at each other.

The man never did give him another look at that unusual instrument. And the young lady seemed much more forward than was usual for women of her age and station. Not so much so as to be impolite, but she was very different from the debutantes of Colorado Springs. Yes, a strange couple, even if you made allowances for them being British. Perhaps they were eloping? They wouldn't be the first lovers to run west, away from disapproving families.

Lucas paused as he heard an odd sound in the distance. Not the thunder that usually came from Niko's lab…this was a groaning, wheezing type of noise, coming from a completely different direction than where the lab stood. A breeze blew Lucas' hat off, then vanished as quickly as it arose.

_Now_ he heard the sound of thunder coming from Niko's lab. All the electric lights in the area went out, and the streets were plunged into darkness.

Darkness, except for the glow of a few night-flying electric butterflies.

"Oh, Niko!" Lucas said in a long-suffering tone, rolling his eyes.

* * *

_"A purpose-built laboratory was constructed on land outside the town of Colorado Springs, Colorado… On one occasion, Tesla blew the town's entire electricity supply, causing a blackout until he repaired the generators himself." _– "Nikola Tesla" by Mark Pilkington, online at forteantimes dot com.


End file.
